Sad to say, I have yet to see any evidence that greed and power work that way. The greedy and the power-hungry always want more, no matter how much they have; there's never a point of satiation.

I agree. With greed and power, you can always have *more*. Why stop with what you have when you can have even more? This is tempting to most people. Just see how many millionaires and billionaires (especially those not born to money) continue to try and earn even more money, despite the fact that they can retire in style, not work a day in their lives and live comfortably. Usually, the people with enough greed, lust and ambition to get into positions of power will not be the type of people who get satisfied at a certain position or a certain sum of money. Power is addictive. Admiration is addictive. Money can be addictive to certain people (be that compulsive gamblers or robber barons).

_________________We are but a tiny candle flickering against the darkness of our times.

For me I like Dark settings that show the universe as a grey and uncaring place. What I term for this is gritty and realistic. For all too often RPGs are about emphasizing the heroic and I have no problem with that but it is the heroism of ordinary people making a difference not paragons of some sort of ideal. Thus, I like hero(in)es that are flawed and human. That said, many people would point me to 40K as my model - rather I like Fading Suns which has the right balance or my Traveller campaigns are very much like the Science Fiction of the 1970s - working class stiffs doing odd jobs to make a living. Sadly, I do not really find that vibe reflected in any Science Fiction RPG...where the emphasis is upon the hero's journey.

I’ve been running an Alternate Traveller universe where the 1947 Roswell incident produced a working Jump Drive and Maneuver Drive, and like the ‘secrets’ of the atomic bomb, these secrets get out to the Russians and Chinese as well. Soon, there are Space Stations in orbit over Earth and the nearby systems are being explored. The players are part of the U.N. Special Patrol (think Scouts). It’s a bright, shiny future in the year 1969, the future that we kids who grew up in that era felt we were promised.

The actual missions all run into horrible danger, of course. Think of the 1950’s American television program ‘Space Patrol’ meshed with the ‘Aliens’ movies.

Not sure this belongs here, but I want (for some reason) to report on MY JOURNEY:

I love the old GDW [Traveller] 2300AD universe, and was quite pleased to see it bolted on to Mongoose Traveller.

I played and played the heck out of Traveller in the day, but I have to say I was never comfortable with the claustrophobic 2d6 system and the effect DMs had on that. A single point of DM—a single pip on the dice—made a hell of an impact, if you larded on one DM too many or took one off in a fit of generosity, which made it harder IMO to easily GM on the fly, sandbox style. Plus the relative absence of a nexus between skills and attributes made it tough(er) IMO to improvise.

I’ve loved the BRP system. I greatly admire Simon Phipp’s conversion of Trav to RQ. I’ve liked the port of 2300AD to BRP. And so they all were married.

But where it really gets supercharged is porting all that over to Open Quest, with its stripped down combat rules and glossed approach to skills. I recently bought the modern day OQ mercenary game and found it had a pleasant balance of “gun porn” with “when muzzles start flashing, what difference does it really make?” if you’re hit with autofire, what difference do hit locations make? I’ve also admired OQ’s idea that difficulty penalties, if they matter at all, should matter—25%, 50% or why bother? There’s a kind of carelessness to it all that actually seems to respect the casual deadliness of modern weapons: When the guns come out, you're @#$$%ed. Why dwell on it?

I ran a combat scenario with friends a few days ago using OQ and really liked it. Fast and furious. Combat worth avoiding in the future, if possible. It seems to hit the right balance and felt a lot like a vastly unburdened version of the old GDW game.

I understand River of Heaven will run under OQ. Cool; I’ll buy it—if for no other reason than to see where I messed up. But for now, my journey seems complete.

I don't necessarily believe it will happen (because bread and circuses are more effective than to overt oppression), but it makes for easier gaming opportunities and leaves violence as a more acceptable method of problem resolution for the characters.

I tend to play middle of the road using the assumption that "optimists are seldom pleasantly surprised" but that "misery is optional". I try to keep the NPC's responses reasonably realistic and throw in a few utopians and some really pessimistic and hardcore bad guys or groups. The players have to watch out for themselves and their groups while interacting with the folks mentioned above.

The utopian thing is what turns me off about Star Trek. I just can't make myself believe that human nature will have changed that much.

I do like Eclipse Phase because it is relatively easy to torque the situation either way the story needs to progress.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum